Kindle 3 Keyboard Shortcuts (Ver 1.8)

Searching

To copy text from a book to the search box (eg to search for a character’s name):

Use the 5-way to cursor down to the beginning of the text you want to copy

Click the 5-way to mark the beginning

Use the 5-way to move right, selecting the word(s) you want to search for

Instead of clicking again as you would to save a highlight, press SPACEBAR

The selected words are now in the search box. Move the cursor down
or right, delete any extraneous characters, then move down and right to
highlight ‘Find’. Click to search.

Clear text from search/edit box: ALT+DEL

Default search action: when the action on the right of the search
box is the one you want, you do not have to use the 5-way to move to
highlight it first; you can just press ENTER (or click)

Similarly, if the cursor is in the URL field of the web browser,
the action shown to the right is the default and you can just press
ENTER

The SYM key is only active when a search/edit box is active

To start a search from the Home screen with a symbol, press DEL or ENTER to open up a search box, then press SYM

In other screens, DEL or ENTER will not work; to open a search/edit box so you can use SYM, type a space and then delete it

For when you don’t even know what day of the week it is:

Search for DATE or TIME from the home screen

It is the first item in results; select it

To just see the time without searching, press MENU

@help – list all functions available for searching from the Home screen:

@dict <keyword>

@help

@print [no idea what this does]

@store <keyword>

@url <url> (goes to browser if no URL)

@web <google search term >

@wiki <keyword>

@wikipedia <keyword>

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

Start/Stop: SHIFT+SYM

To start at a specific spot, use the 5-way to position the cursor first

When TTS is on, BACK turns it off v1.8

Pause/Restart: SPACEBAR

When TTS is turned on, most of the keyboard is locked; if you press
SPACEBAR or use Aa to pause TTS, you cannot manually navigate through
the book because TTS is still active, and it may appear that the Kindle
has frozen. Press SPACEBAR to resume TTS, or press SHIFT+SYM, BACK or
HOME to turn off TTS entirely. The Aa key also still works. v1.4

TTS won’t work if the publisher has disabled TTS for the book; TTS
status can be found under the book pricing in the Kindle bookstore v1.4

TTS only works when you have a book open v1.4

Voice Guide

If you only have one page of settings, the Kindle is not yet
registered or has not yet ‘talked’ to the Amazon servers; you need to
turn on wireless (if you don’t have wi-fi (or 3G) yourself, you may
need to find a wi-fi hotspot)

I don’t know of any keyboard shortcut for turning the voice guide on/off; it seems the most obvious candidate for a shortcut

The voice guide, which lets you navigate your Kindle with spoken
menus, selectable items, and descript-xions, is separate from TTS,
which reads the text of a book/document (unless the publisher has
disabled that ability)

Background Music

Play/Stop: ALT+SPACEBAR

Next track: ALT+F

Music files must be MP3s in the Kindle’s ‘music’ folder

Games

Minesweeper: ALT+SHIFT+M from Home screen

MENU for game options

GoMoku: G from Minesweeper

Home

Rescan for files: ALT+Z

Jump to page: <number> then click or ENTER

To type numbers, use ALT+Q to P for 1 to 0

Jump to Author or Title: <first letter> then click or press
ENTER when in Author or Title sort order respectively. For example, to
go to titles beginning with ‘M’:

First make sure it says ‘By Title’ on the right near the top of the Home screen; if it doesn’t: v1.8

Use the 5-way to move up to that line

Move right with the 5-way to display the sort options

Use the 5-way to underline ‘Title’ and click the 5-way

Back on the Home screen, press the letter ‘m’

The search box will appear with the letter ‘m’ showing, along with the wording ‘click to got to M titles’

Click the 5-way

General

Capital letters when typing: Hit SHIFT first, then the letter; no need to hold them down together

Numbers: ALT+Q to P = 1 to 0 or press SYM when search/edit box is active

Like SHIFT for capital letters, ALT is sticky, so you can type ALT
followed by a letter on the top row (ALT, Q, ALT, W, ALT, E types 123)

Redraw screen: ALT+G (removes ghosting)

Screenshot: ALT+SHIFT+G or ALT+SHIFT+H v1.7 (saves a .GIF in the Kindle document directory)

The screen flashes for both ALT+G and ALT+SHIFT+G. As it is easy to
do an ALT+G by mistake, ALT+SHIFT+H may be a safer way to do a
screenshot.

Display the time: MENU displays the time at the top of the screen

Display amount of space left on the Kindle: MENU from the Home, Settings, or Experimental screen

To see if you still have books indexing, from the home screen type
a nonsense search like ‘xzwwx’ [or even just a period] and press ENTER.
If the search result says ‘No items’, indexing has finished; if one or
more items are listed, indexing is still in progress. If a book gets
’stuck’ on indexing, delete it, let other items finish indexing, then
re-download the book to see if it will index.

Hard restart (when everything seems frozen): Slide and hold the power switch for 30 seconds, then wait a minute or two

When you restart, you will see the boy under the hill and a progress bar

If you wait a couple of minutes and still only see a blank screen,
you have not held the power switch for long enough and have turned the
Kindle off

To turn the Kindle off completely (blank screen), slide and hold the power switch for around 7 seconds. v1.8

It is recommended to only turn the Kindle off if it is not going to be used for a long time (weeks).

From Settings screen:

Change 3G provider: type 311 (ALT+EQQ)

Kindle Serial No et al: type 411 (ALT+RQQ)

3G Modem information: type 611 (ALT+YQQ)

Wi-fi Modem information: type 711 (ALT+UQQ)

Reading

Add/remove bookmarks: ALT+B

Zoom in on an illustration: use the 5-way to position the cursor
over the picture; the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a +
sign; click to zoom; the K3 will display the illustration in landscape
if that is a better fit than portrait

Chapter marks: some, but not all, books have dots along the reading progress bar when you first open them

You can use the 5-way to move left and right between chapters

Your bookmarks, notes and highlights also add dots to the progress bar; you cannot use the 5-way to move between these marks

Nudge the selection frame when a PDF document is zoomed, or when panning a zoomed document: SHIFT+5-way direction

Delete multiple bookmarks, highlights, notes:

Select ‘View My Notes & Marks’ from the menu

Use the 5-way to move to the note/mark to be deleted

Press DEL

Repeat for each note/mark to be deleted

When reading an Amazon format book, use the Aa key to:

Change font size and typeface

Change line spacing and words per line

Turn on Text to Speech if enabled for your current book

Change screen orientation

When reading a PDF, use the Aa key to:

Change zoom level

Change contrast

Change screen orientation

Sorting Collections

When in Collections sort order, the collections will
display in sequence of most recently accessed, followed by
subscript-xions and books not in any collection

When in Title sort order, the collections display along with all your individual books, in Title sequence

You can control the Title sort order by using collection
names that start with a symbol that sorts before the alpha characters
in book titles. My collections are:

(Reading: current)

(Reading: fiction)

(Reading: non-fiction)

[Genre 1]

[Genre 2]

[Genre 3] etc

{Author 1}

{Author 2} etc

On the Home screen, use the 5-way to move to the top line, move right, and change sort order to ‘Title’

When in Title sort order, my collections display first in the order shown, followed by all the individual books

Other naming options include using different or multiple starting
symbols, starting collection names with AAA or numbers etc. It has been
reported that starting collection names with a period causes problems
and that if you start with an asterisk, you should put a space after
the asterisk.

To see just your collections (plus subscript-xions and books not
yet in a collection), on the Home screen, use the 5-way to move to the
top line, move right, and change sort order to ‘Collections v1.8‘

Adding Books to Collections

To add multiple books to a collection: v1.8

On the Home screen use the 5-way to move to the collection

Move the 5-way to the right to display the collection’s detail page and click on ‘Add/remove items’

Use the 5-way to move up and down the list of all your books, clicking on each book you want in the collection

A check-mark appears next to books in the current collection; click again to remove a book from the collection

Use Next Page and Previous Page if you have multiple pages of books

To add a book to one or multiple collections:

On the Home screen use the 5-way to move to the book title

Move the 5-way to the right to display the book’s detail page and click on ‘Add to collection …’

Use the 5-way to move up and down the list of collections, clicking on each collection you want the book to be in

A check-mark appears next to each collection in which the book will be listed; click again to remove it from that collection

Use Next Page and Previous Page if you have multiple pages of collections

Books added to collections will still be listed on the Home screen unless you change your sort order to ‘By Collections’

Photo Albums

Connect your Kindle via USB

Create a folder called ‘pictures’ in the root directory of the Kindle; it should be on the same level as the ‘documents’ folder

Open the ‘pictures’ folder and, inside it, create a new folder with the name you want your album to have (eg ‘Family’)

You can create multiple albums by creating multiple folders inside the ‘pictures’ folder

If you remove an Amazon book from your Kindle, the number of books
on your Kindle decreases by one, and the number of books listed in your
archives increases by one.

All books purchased from Amazon are stored on the Amazon servers
and can be downloaded to the Kindle at any time by selecting it from
the archive list (as long as you have a Whispernet connection).

Personal documents and books purchased from sources other than Amazon are not stored on the Amazon servers and you must keep your own backup copy.

Removing books from the Kindle

To remove a book from your Kindle, use the 5-way to move to the
book title and then move the 5-way to the right to display the book’s
detail page.

You can also move the 5-way to the left, but it’s very easy to accidentally delete a collection when you do that

Select the option "Remove from Device".

If the option is "Delete This Document" rather than "Remove from
Device", the book was not purchased from Amazon; if you delete it,
there will not be a backup copy on Amazon’s servers.

Occasionally, a book gets "stuck" and cannot be removed; instead,
it remains greyed out on the Kindle even after you remove it. If this
happens, connect the Kindle to you computer via USB and manually delete
the book’s .azw (or .azw1 or .tpz) file and its matching .mbp (or .tan)
file.

Deleting books forever

To permanently delete a book from the Amazon archive, you need to go to your Manage Your Kindle page on the Amazon web site

Locate the book in ‘Your Orders’

Click on the + to the left of the book title to show additional options

Click on the ‘Delete this title’ button

Warning: this is a permanent delete. If you want to read the book again, you will have to re-purchase it from Amazon.

If a book has been removed from your Kindle and does not appear in
‘Your Orders’, but still appears in your archive list on the Kindle,
you have probably moved the book to trash in Your Media Library. To
check:

Once in Your Collection, click on the drop-down box and select ‘Trash’

Take the book out of Trash

Go back to Manage Your Kindle; the book should now appear in Your Orders and can be deleted.

Book File Formats

AZW: This is the format of most books purchased
from Amazon; it is a modified version of the .mobi format and can be
read only by the Kindle and Kindle apps. v1.7

Most, but not all, books purchased from Amazon have Digital Rights
Management (DRM) which prevents copying from one device to another.
DRM’d books must be downloaded separately for each device.

Samples are usually DRM-free.

Bookmarks, notes etc are saved in an .mbp file.

TPZ/AZW1: "The dreaded Topaz format" is an Amazon format which can contain embedded fonts and other rendering control.

Files in this format have an .azw1 extension when they are
delivered via Whispernet or a .tpz extension when they are delivered
via file download.

It is likely all books in this format have DRM.

If the product details for a book show the number of pages but no file size, it is likely it is in Topaz format.

Bookmarks, notes etc are saved in a .tan file.

Fortunately, relatively few books purchased from Amazon come in
this format, which often behaves badly. For example, your last-read
position may not be remembered when the Kindle goes to sleep.

It often helps to press HOME when you are finished reading, rather than leaving the book open.

Unprotected MOBI/PRC: The Mobipocket format is based on XHTML.

Either the .mobi or .prc file extension can be used; the .prc
extension arose because PalmOS does not recognise files with a .mobi
extension.

The Kindle does NOT support protected .mobi files. Even though
Mobipocket is now owned by Amazon, protected mobi files have DRM which
the Kindle does not handle.

Free books formatted for the Kindle from the catalogues of sites such as Feedbooks, MobileRead, and Gutenberg will come in unprotected mobi or prc format.

TXT: Plain text files are small and can be read on almost any device, but lack formatting.

Non-ADE PDF: PDFs are often used where layout is important and may contain embedded fonts, tables, diagrams etc.

PDFs which require ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) are protected and cannot be read on the Kindle.

You can read password-protected PDFs on your Kindle.

PDFs are often formatted for A4 or letter size pages and do not
reflow (change their line length and page size to suit the screen size).

If layout is not critical in a PDF, it is often better to convert it to an AZW via Amazon’s conversion service (remembering to put Convert in the subject line of the email) or using a program such as Calibre.

AZW2: ‘Active content’ such as games have an AZW2 extension.: v1.8

These files have DRM and cannot just be copied from one Kindle to
another (Active content is not yet available to users outside the US,
so I can’t test this)

Conversion from other formats: Other book formats require conversion to .mobi format before they can be read on the Kindle.

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